


so cold, to live without a soul

by roswyrm



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Flashbacks, How Do I Tag, Light Angst, Multi, Polyamory, poor lili
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-11-14 05:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18046310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roswyrm/pseuds/roswyrm
Summary: It's all Liliana wanted. To be left blissfully alone.





	so cold, to live without a soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kalgalen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalgalen/gifts).



> Title from the song _OK_ by 8 Graves

Usually, there’s someone next to her. Either Hamid is curled into her side, or Gideon is tangling their legs together. And Liliana doesn’t miss it, exactly, not when she has such interesting things to experiment with. Liliana can’t miss it, not now that she knows exactly the kind of person Hamid is. She doesn’t miss Hamid. She doesn’t miss Gideon either, not really. She’s too preoccupied with the crystals and the elementals and with the energy that they provide to miss anything except food that isn’t perfectly geometric, and she’s usually too busy to notice the particular shapes of the meal she’s eating. But she misses the memories of before she was so busy.

Liliana’s always busy, but that didn’t start when she met Newton.

(Gideon rested his chin on her head. “What are you working on today?” Liliana rolled her eyes and moved her pen away to let him properly look at it. When he moved down, bending closer to read her — admittedly cramped — handwriting, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. It wasn’t something that always happened, just when Liliana was feeling particularly affectionate. Gideon turned from looking at the worksheet to looking at her. “You missed,” he said, tapping a finger to his lips. 

Liliana fitted her palm over his mouth and gently pushed him away. “I’m busy. Go bother Hamid; I think he needs a break from his divination homework anyway.” Gideon licked her hand, and she yanked it back. “Eugh! Gideon, gross!” He laughed and kissed her forehead. She swatted his shoulder and pretended she wasn’t laughing, too.)

“The crystals used to contain the elementals seems to matter a great deal,” Liliana enunciates into her dictaphone, “for example, mere quartz will not restrain anything but the weakest earth elemental. More testing will be required to learn which crystal holds which elementals the best, and why. End recording.” 

(“Is that how you always finish? ‘End recording’?” Liliana clicked her recorder off. “That’s so _sterile,_ Lili. You sound a bit like your professor.” She raised an eyebrow at Hamid, who was lounging in her lap. He had his eyes closed, still trying to sleep. 

_“Mr al-Tahan,”_ she said in a too-high impression of Professor Novák, “ _don’t sass me or my methods.”_ Hamid scrunched his face up in distaste, barely squinting one eye open. She beamed at him, and he scoffed. “Now, pretty please, can you get off of my lap and reset the test for me?” Hamid glared. Liliana batted her eyelashes ridiculously. “I’ll give you a kiss,” she sing-songed, and Hamid sighed heavily.

He sat up and accepted the quick peck on the lips she gave him before beginning the lengthy process of resetting Liliana’s experiment. “You’re fortunate I love you,” he informed her. She smiled beatifically.)

The small blue crystal on her desk cracks and Liliana jerks her papers up in half an instant. The water elemental doesn’t manage to get out any further, though, and Liliana groans. Maybe a drop or two of water drips out as the elemental continues raging. The phonograph keeps playing as Liliana sets her papers down a safe distance away. “I’ll transfer you to a different crystal if you’re going to throw a fit about your current one,” she scolds, “but I’m not letting you go.” The elemental yells back in a language like a babbling brook that Liliana has no interest in learning. _Maybe I am lonely,_ Liliana muses as she gets out a slightly bigger sodalite obelisk. Talking to a water creature that’s only half-sentient. Honestly.

(Hamid curled into her side and made a small noise of exhaustion. Liliana didn’t object. She brought her hand up and twirled his hair around her fingers. She didn’t ask what was wrong, though, because as much as she loved her boyfriend, she wanted to focus on the book she was reading. And she managed it, somehow, as Hamid slowly collapsed further into her shoulder.

After about half an hour of lying on the couch together, the door opened. “I’m going to _murder_ Curie, I swear to any god that’s listening!” Gideon tossed his bag off — it landed somewhere with a worryingly loud thud — and threw himself down onto the couch on Liliana’s left side. Hamid reached out a hand, and Gideon took it as he tangled his and Liliana’s legs together.

Liliana readjusted slightly so she could see the pages of her book without making either of her boys let go of the other. “As long as Einstein gets framed for it,” Hamid murmured, “I don’t ever want to go to his class again. He keeps teleporting in the middle of his sentences. It gives me nausea.” Liliana leaned her head on Gideon’s shoulder and kept reading as they complained about their teachers.)

The fire elemental is considerably stronger. Or, maybe, the crystal is considerably weaker. Liliana doesn’t even realise until she smells smoke. She whirls around to see the inch-high fire elemental quickly gaining height as her research goes up in flames. She snatches the fire blanket and throws it over her desk. “Damnit,” she says. And then again, louder, _“Damnit!”_ She slams a fist into the wall and it doesn’t even shake because it’s such a _perfect godsdamn world_ that no matter what she does, nothing ever breaks because then it wouldn’t be the _exact geometric shape_ Newton wants it to be. Her papers are probably singed beyond the point of reading them all, and the fire elemental is probably smothered. She’s going to have to get another one. She bangs the wall once more. “Damnit,” she whispers, allowing herself one more moment of anger before rolling her shoulders back and striding calmly off to find Newton.

And Liliana doesn’t miss it, not exactly. But usually, there’s someone next to her. Either Hamid is squeezing her shoulder in sympathy of her lost work, or Gideon is nudging her in the side gently as a reassurance. Liliana doesn’t miss Hamid or Gideon, not much, but she misses the way they used to fit together.


End file.
